So, About That Boston Olympic Bid…

Potential hosts for the 2022 Winter Olympics are dropping like flies in Europe, marked most recently by a voter referendum in Poland that saw 70 percent of its voters say no thanks to the prospect of spending piles of cash in hopes of a local economic boost…oh, and the perceived glory of hosting the games, or something.

Krakow is the third 2022 bid dropped in the face of referendum, and another bid in Sweden has also been dropped, according to Deadspin. The trend dovetails with the angst in Brazil over the past couple of years, with protestors arguing national problems have taken a financial backseat to preparations for the upcoming World Cup (which starts in a couple of weeks).

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Meanwhile, more locally, Philadelphia officials decided yesterday to end its exploration of a bid for the 2024 summer games. As reported by CBS Philadelphia, that city’s mayor had the following to say:

It is millions and millions of dollars–probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars–to host such an enterprise. You have to build an Olympic village for people to live. You have to build Olympic-scale facilities for swimming or track or whatever you don’t have enough of. So I felt, at this stage, that we should not submit a bid.

Which, of course, brings us all the way home to Boston’s own potential bid for the 2024 games, a notion that has received a mixed reaction in the city as the idea has bounced around over the last year or so.

The question—especially in light of the $50 billion Sochi games last winter—looks like this: If the rest of the world is starting to think twice about the cost-benefit ratio of hosting the Olympics, why shouldn’t Boston?

The Boston 2024 Olympic committee declined to comment to Boston.com when reached by phone.